Children love to learn. They are hungry to gain skills and explore the world. Everything is so new to them so they want to try things and test their limits. A healthy child brought up in a healthy environment with positive attitudes invariably goes on to become an inquisitive and creative adult.

The problem, however, for most children is the adults they encounter.

When parents bring their children up afraid of the world, the child is driven to withdraw from opportunities due to fear about what might happen.

Schools also put children into boxes and stifle their creativity, instead producing drones that will fit into the industrial model of society. As Picasso said, “All children are born artists; the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”

Have you had the creativity programmed out of you?

When you are faced with a problem, do you continually revert to old strategies that no longer work?

How creative are you in your thinking?

To live a fulfilling and creative life you need to be someone who is not afraid to try new things.

It is important to embrace uncertainty and make of it whatever opportunities you can. If you are hanging on only to what you know, you are in trouble because the world and life changes, so you need to change and adapt. Not adapting will often result in you missing out on the enormous potential adventure life can offer you.

In speaking about you being creative I am not just taking about pursuing your passion for art or crafts but about the very ethos you use to create your own reality – and yes, you can create your own reality from inside your mind outwards.

How do you want to live your life and are you stopping yourself from doing that?

What do you enjoy doing above everything else and how can you fit that into your life?

If you died tomorrow, what memories would you like to have and what things would you have liked to have done?

Sure, we all have day-to-day responsibilities that we are obliged to take seriously but after you have done that, are you living your dreams or are you just going through the motions, engaged in a monotonous routine?

Have you actually dulled the creativeness of your own mind?

The first step to being a more creative thinker is to let go of who you used to be, because who you used to be is not the person you need to be today or tomorrow.

You have to take a leap into the unknown and accept that many times things will work out and other times the adventure is a learning lesson about what you might do differently in future. If you want a guarantee in life, buy a toaster.

It’s never too late to change your mind to be more creative, just as it is never too late to change your life.

What it requires, however, is the commitment to recondition your mind to automatically think and work differently.

You have to explore and train your mind if you want to change the way it works so that it is more creative and you think about problems, solutions, opportunities and adventures in a radically different way.

One of the things I always talk about when I present to hypnotherapists is supervision, not only the value of supervision but also the absolute necessity of it when you are in practice.

To be honest, there is a lot of fluffy information out there about supervision.

Many hypnotherapy courses do not want to frighten students with the cost of supervision in case it puts them off studying or not completing the courses. Students themselves complain about the cost of supervision when they are just starting out as therapists.

There are of course many unregulated therapists who do not belong to associations who have no supervision.

Let’s go back to why we have regular supervision:

Review our learning processes

Guide us towards new learnings and techniques

Gain perspective on the cases we are working with at this time

Keep us honest in recognising our limitations and the limitations of therapy and ethical guidelines

Challenge us to broaden our therapeutic capabilities

Hold us legally accountable for the work with which we are engaged

The best therapists are ones that are always learning. In the field of drug and alcohol addiction I can honestly say I am still learning new information all the time, after decades in practice. To reflect on those learnings during supervision helps me consider the effectiveness of those learnings.

I have had a large variety of supervisors over my career who have suggested many different directions for my learning and helped me find ways to attain those learnings and new techniques. Since we are all exposed to a variety of other therapists it is fascinating to learn what other therapists know that we might learn.

When we work with drug and alcohol addiction clients they come in many different shapes and forms. Their addictions, mindsets and co-pathologies are all different and we really have to think on the spot in the therapy session.

It is challenging work and since we as therapists are also human beings we have our great successes as well as sessions where we may reflect and consider that we might have perhaps led the client in a different direction. Gaining perspective by reflection and objectively with a supervisor helps us consider how we might take clients forward in the future sessions.

Drug and alcohol addiction clients do not always follow our instructions or comply with treatment. We have to be careful about the goals we set them and the goals we set ourselves as therapists. It is just as important to recognise the limitations of clients, therapy and us as therapists as it is to recognise a client’s abilities and potential.

In practice we can never be complacent or arrogant that we are competent. When we say we are in practice, that is exactly what we are, practising our abilities as therapists. The job of supervision is to also challenge us to broaden our abilities as therapists so that we practise to become more competent.

In doing this a supervisor also needs to be excited about the work we, they and the clients are doing. A good supervisor is also your cheerleader as a therapist to bolster your confidence so that you can become a better therapist.

Legally as therapists you show that you are being held accountable for your work by your peers. Should there ever be a clinical accident when psychotic decompression takes place with a client or they commit suicide or sue you, you have to show from your records that you have been clinically responsible. Supervision is part of this process, which is why you should keep evidence of your supervision for your entire career.

Working with people addicted to drugs and alcohol, in my mind, requires therapists to undergo individual supervision, not group supervision. Whilst I understand that many therapists only work part time or are just getting started in their practice, working in the addiction field is working with people who are perhaps faced with the option of life or death.

Addiction to drugs and alcohol is a medical emergency where patients may die suddenly without warning so we must become highly skilled as hypnotherapists and that can only happen when we have individual supervision. The more skilled you become, the more successful your practice will become and you will be able to help many more people overcome their addictions.

Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH, BHSc, is an approved supervisor with the Australian Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists, specialising in the supervision of hypnotherapists working with clients who are experiencing drug and alcohol addiction. She offers one-to-one supervision by Skype, phone or face-to-face at her Surry Hills, Sydney clinic. Call 02 8021 6429 for details.

Many people feel they are not reaching their goals in life. No matter what they do they just seem to fall short of succeeding in whatever they are doing.

Are you one of those people?

Do you tell people you are going to do something but never seem to be able to report you completed it?

No matter how hard you try, do you always come fourth, fifth or last?

Is it a mystery to you why other people achieve so much, yet you rarely finish a project?

Why does everything you set out to do seem so hard once you start the task?

Always feeling a failure?

Do other people expect very little of you?

All of us are different. We have different origins, education, expectation and abilities. So, it is only logical that we would be setting different goals for ourselves. That is large life goals such as qualifying in a profession and micro goals that we might want to go to the gym three times a week. No goal is better than another, just different.

For some people the big life goals are important such as becoming a lawyer or being hugely successful in business. Other people are happy with less lofty goals – they are happy to focus on being able to eat or having somewhere to live, although to them those goals may seem huge.

Whatever your goals are, the reason you fail to achieve them is generally because you fail to see the task through. You don’t have a method, system or determination to take you to that goal.

People who succeed in reaching their goals do so because they have a formula.

They might not even be aware consciously that they are following a formula.

Equally as important is having persistence.

Those who achieve their goals do not give up and will try and try and try again. They will come at a problem time and time again from different angles until they find a way to achieve that goal.

Here’s the formula for achieving a goal:

Setting a realistic goal is the first key to being able to achieve it. If the goal is far too difficult and absolutely out of your abilities then you are setting yourself up for failure. Be sure the goal is within your capabilities with the resources you have available to you.

Lay out a timetable so you and everyone else know by which time the goal is to be achieved. Stay with the timetable.

Study success by finding someone who has achieved that or a similar goal before. Learn from them and their story.

Break the goal down into smaller, more doable chunks and complete each of those smaller tasks. Complete each task that takes you towards the big goal.

Get the help you need to complete the smaller chunks and larger goal.

Become adaptable by trying something new when you hit a roadblock.

Be relentless by going back to the goal until it is completed

Know when you have reached the goal by clearly identifying what it looks like and when you get there – and celebrate your success.

Of course you have to actually do the above and many people procrastinate, get stuck and don’t achieve their goals.

]]>https://www.doctorok.com/how-do-i-reach-my-goals-in-life/feed/0Are you a careful planner in business?https://www.doctorok.com/are-you-a-careful-planner-in-business/
https://www.doctorok.com/are-you-a-careful-planner-in-business/#respondMon, 23 Jan 2017 04:59:29 +0000https://www.doctorok.com/?p=4718Continue reading →]]>This is a blog for the business section of doctorok.com.

Being in business requires meticulous attention to detail.

If you behave in business as if someone else will pick up your slack, fix your mistakes or do the stuff you can’t be bothered to pay attention to, you will go broke very fast.

I see this a great deal in many people who have just started in business. They have this star-gazing look on their faces that show they think they are going to make their fortune doing about as much work as they did when they were employed by someone else.

“I’m building my product and business”, they say, but you can tell from talking to them that they are unaware of the necessary structure that needs to be in place to make a business work well and be profitable.

All wealthy people who built their business from the ground up sweated for their first million. We have built in structures that organise every part of our lives and business.

Nothing is left to chance because we know time and wasted dithering costs us money. You learn this after you suffer failure in business or you learn it from your teachers and mentors but you do not learn it by just starting a business and hoping for the best.

If a successful business person does not have these organised structures, there will be areas of their lives that are highly stressful and the people around them will suffer.

They will also experience constant failures and setbacks and blame a range of problems, always other than their own lack of organisation.

After 46 years in business I am a great planner. I have plans A, B, C and endless contingencies for endless situations.

I have a range of back-up plans if A, B or C does not work and there will be times when they do not work. I learnt this from my mentors as well as from experience.

I always tell the people who attend my wealth building events or are in coaching with me that lack of organisational planning and arrogance are the worst enemies of people starting out or struggling with their businesses.

It takes a team to build a business and a major part of that team are your teachers, coaches and mentors. They teach you to be a great planner.

If you lack those components of your business plan, your business will sink like a stone and probably much faster as you drown in chaos.

Not to have teachers, coaches and mentors is an arrogant mistake.

When you are investing your own money in business you hold yourself to different standards. You make more of an effort to turn $10,000 into a $100,000 then to $1 million, so you plan because losing your own money is the most painful experience of all in business.

Here’s what you can do:

Plan, plan and plan again

Be on top of your workload and prioritise what needs doing

Be the most organised person you know

Learn from your mistakes and see where you went wrong in the planning

Remember investing in yourself is investing in your business

Listen with every part of your being to your teaches, coaches and mentors

Only choose teachers, coaches and mentors who are successful themselves and not just regurgitating from books that they did not write or teachers they did not learn from

]]>https://www.doctorok.com/are-you-a-careful-planner-in-business/feed/0Building your wealth in 2017 during ‘Trumpernomics’https://www.doctorok.com/building-your-wealth-in-2017-during-trumpernomics/
https://www.doctorok.com/building-your-wealth-in-2017-during-trumpernomics/#respondFri, 18 Nov 2016 07:32:08 +0000https://www.doctorok.com/?p=4683Continue reading →]]>This is a blog for the business section of doctorok.

I have just finished running another Money Money Money Mindset Bootcamp. We had such a great time. It’s always enormous fun to help people work out how they can make their money and build their businesses and wealth.

Of course one of the hot topics I was discussing was how you could make money during the Trump presidency.

Yes, that affects us wherever we are as trade flows will change, and interest rates and currency levels will be affected. While the next term under Hillary Clinton would have probably been more predictable to a certain extent, we can also predict the direction the presidency will likely take under Trumpernomics.

Of course Brexit was a big event this year, with 20% currency devaluation. I got money out in advance. But 20% devaluation may yet still be the tip of the iceberg.

Whether it is a bull market or bear market does not make any difference if you have been taught to roll with the markets, change your product and service bases fast and flexibly.

I’m feeling itchy to buy and build over the next four years, even though Trump proposes to operate trade sanctions. I will naturally be doing that in a way that takes great care to consider the wellbeing of people, animals and planet. We must all consider what kind of world we will leave behind us – don’t you agree?

It was nice to see our attendees in the Business Tribe get past the million-dollar mark and others increase their assets by millions.

As I tell you, it is all down to the mentoring.

If you don’t have mentoring your ego is getting in the way of your learning.

We hold you accountable again and again. That’s what my mentors did for me, which paved the way for me to become so successful.

So Christmas will be coming up in a month and I will be giving money away again to my favourite charity Warchild to help children in distress in war zones. I hope you will be giving away part of your good fortune too.

One of the benefits of having wealth and good fortune is that you can spread it around to those who need it.

No one ever becomes successful on their own. If you are trying to do it on your own it will be a long, hard road. We all need a helping hand by those who have already achieved their dreams of financial security. We all had to start somewhere. I know the people I chose to be my mentors accelerated my path to wealth.

Although I would never have voted for Donald Trump I can still make a lot of many during his term in office, just as I can under Malcolm Turnbull or Theresa May.

Business is Business is Business.

Dates have been announced for the 2017 next Money Money Money Mindset Bootcamp:

]]>https://www.doctorok.com/building-your-wealth-in-2017-during-trumpernomics/feed/0Fiscal responsibility in Business: Do you have it?https://www.doctorok.com/fiscal-responsibility-in-business-do-you-have-it/
https://www.doctorok.com/fiscal-responsibility-in-business-do-you-have-it/#respondThu, 15 Sep 2016 01:05:28 +0000https://www.doctorok.com/?p=4654Continue reading →]]>This is a blog for the doctorok business section.

Do you live with your head in the clouds? Are you a dreamer? Is reality around fiscal responsibility in the too-hard box for you?

Or are you some who watches your accounts and takes action when need be?

Most new businesses go broke when the dreamer who set them up finds out that they did not get the illusion they sought of a business that would make them financially comfortable. They find a hundred and one things to blame for the failure of their business but the truth is that they did not think through their business and marketing plan and stay to budget.

Behind every successful business is a mind that is constantly fiscally virulent and plans and stays on budget. Creativity and innovation are not able to flourish unless a business is soluble and profitable. People will not work for you for fresh air and bills must be paid.

The other day I was at a seminar and the presenter talked about it taking three years to make a business profitable. What I heard inside my head was someone who for the first three years of their business did no know how to run it efficiently and effectively.

They are what I call ‘flat earthers’. In other words their model of the world was only what they immediately saw and they were unable to perceive that the earth may be greater than their model so they only see is the earth as flat.

You should set up a business to be profitable from the outset. If it is not profitable, either there is no money in that market and you are chasing pipe dreams or you are fiscally irresponsible. It is, after all, supposed to be a business not an expensive hobby.

When I teach people how to run a business, I teach that you do not set up or run a business that makes no money. What exactly would be the point? Why would you set up a business to lose money, use up your savings or squander your inheritance?

However, so many people do and you can bet when they realise they did not think things through, they blame the failure of their business and that hundred and one mysterious bad omens.

So are you being fiscally responsible?

Do you check your accounts constantly?

Are you obsessed with figures?

If not, you will not be a successful business person and your company will not make money or a profit.

When I was at college aged 15, I reluctantly studied book keeping and accounting as part of my business curriculum. I hated it but it has stayed in my mind the whole of my life and helped me become a successful business person.
I learnt my numbers and investing strategies.

To be successful in business you must learn your numbers and be prepared to invest in your financial education; or you can spend years, like the presenter at the seminar I went to, running your business at a loss, pretending you are building the business, but in reality you’re going broke.

Which do you think is wisest?

Are you looking to grow your wealth? Join me in Sydney (Australia) for my 3 Day Money Money Money Mindset Bootcamp on 11, 12, 13 November to learn how to build your wealth from a ‘freak’ who beat all the odds.

]]>https://www.doctorok.com/fiscal-responsibility-in-business-do-you-have-it/feed/0Are you tenacious enough to be in business?https://www.doctorok.com/are-you-tenacious-enough-to-be-in-business/
https://www.doctorok.com/are-you-tenacious-enough-to-be-in-business/#respondMon, 11 Jul 2016 07:33:31 +0000https://www.doctorok.com/?p=4627Continue reading →]]>This is a blog for the doctorok business section.

Last night I totally shocked someone I’m coaching in business. She knew it was my birthday, it was 8.00pm and I was calling her trying to help her put a deal together. “What are you doing?” she exclaimed. “It’s your birthday!”

We had been pursuing the deal for weeks and it had fallen apart because someone could not deliver but it was a good money-making opportunity so we were trying a different approach to make it happen.

I explained that it did not matter what day it was to me as I was having a good time making the deal happen and we should not stop until it happens. The deal came together.

Most people who go into business think they are simply getting a different job in their own business. They are shocked when they find themselves in business and the responsibilities that they have to face to make their business work. That is why the majority of people fail in business within the first few years. They never expected they would have to work so intensely.

When you are in business – the buck stops with you. You have to deliver what you say you will deliver, pay your staff on time and make sure your business is working well in profit. Since I have been in business most of my life, this comes as first nature to me. I just do it automatically without question.

Is this tenacity in business?

Yes – you do what you have to do to make the business work.

You relentlessly approach a task again and again and again until you make it work.

Maybe you cannot always do this on your own. You may you need help or bring in new people and skills but whatever needs to happen, you make it so, without complaining.

And that really is the crux of it – you do it without complaining.

You create a series of positive and creative attitudes and tasks that will eventually take you to your goal. When things don’t work out, you take a breath and try something else to get to the goal.

Complaining does not help. If you are employed by someone else you may be tempted to complain that the task you have to have to complete is too taxing or too hard and undoable. But when you work for yourself there is no one to complain to and you have to take responsibility to make it happen, sometimes even when you have to stay up all night.

You need to adopt a positive attitude. Do not think how the task may fail, but rather how do you make it happen?

Positivity is the key that allows you to do the work that needs doing. Never treat what you do as a chore, but as a pleasurable step to your goal, even if the steps are hard.

You don’t give in. You keep going at a problem until you find the solution, no matter how much effort that takes.

That said, you also have to work smart. Assess the situation and work out the most efficient, effective way of finding the solution to problems.

On the night of my birthday I was grateful to have the opportunity to help the person I was helping. Every day that I get to do what I do in business I count myself fortunate to have those opportunities. I get a buzz out of seeing people do well so they can make their businesses successful.

Tell yourself you are going to complete the task

Effectively use your labour to make it happen

Never give up

Approach the same problem from different angles

Come at the problem again and again

Invite others to help you

Train your staff to be relentless too

Yell for joy when you have achieved the goal

Are you willing to learn how to become a tenacious business person?

If so, I invite you to join me at my next introductory event, live in Sydney, on Thursday 26 August, 6pm to 8.30pm:

Not everyone is born with or develops the X factor that enable them to run a successful business as an adult.

While education can help people do well within the employment environment, it is not enough to teach people to excel in business.

Some people seem to have the X factor from a very young age and others, like me, learnt it from other people. Although my childhood was one of poverty, I was fortunate enough to spend time with a series of people in my early life who taught me the X factor in business.

So what is this X factor that successful business owners have that I am talking about?

The X factor differentiates working people, who will remain employees their entire lives, from business owners and leaders. It is set of attitudes and skills, all of which can be learned.

Of course you have to be willing to learn and be moulded

The first attitude begins with the absolute willingness to learn, learn and learn again

Every day of my life I am looking for new things to learn and people to learn from that will help my business go forward.

The biggest block for most people is dealing with your own ego and admitting to yourself that there are areas of ignorance in your life and you need education.

The second attitude is a willingness to go to the wire

Getting out of your comfort zone is essential to expand your own abilities and to create and run a growing healthy business. The world changes and those who snooze lose. Complacency is not an option.

Tomorrow is never the day to push your business forward because today is your opportunity for profit and profit belongs to the brave.

Just recently I worked with a woman who went from assets of $40,000 to over $1,000,000 in six months. She worked incredibly hard and stretched herself to her limits. Despite moments of massive self-doubt, she kept on relentlessly pushing through, until she reached her goal. She went to the wire.

The third attitude is a willingness to pay to play – to have skin in the game.

Business and people moving money do not want to hang out with people who are not prepared to be ready to deal and spend money.

If you are not buying, no one is interested what you are selling. Money has to move around and successful people spend what they need to spend to make their business successful.

Successful people can smell at 50 metres someone who is not in it to win it by moving the money around.

Skills are important too

The X factor requires you to learn thousands of skills which will help you be successful in business.

The only way you can do that is when you have adopted the first three attitudes outlined above. That does not mean you have to be able to do everything – far from it – but it does mean you need the skills to be the director of you own business’s and staff’s activities.

Oh and a quick note on multi-tasking

Successful people are always multitasking. It is part of their X factor make-up.

As Steve jobs said, “What do I do? I’m the conductor – like in an orchestra.”

Are you willing to learn how to become a better business person?

If so, I invite you to join me at my next introductory event, live in Sydney, on Wednesday 15 May, 6pm to 8.30pm:

]]>https://www.doctorok.com/the-x-factor-in-business/feed/0Do you keep repeating the same mistakes in business?https://www.doctorok.com/do-you-keep-repeating-the-same-mistakes-in-business/
https://www.doctorok.com/do-you-keep-repeating-the-same-mistakes-in-business/#respondMon, 16 May 2016 07:39:48 +0000https://www.doctorok.com/?p=4581Continue reading →]]>This is a blog for the doctorok business section.

Many people who go into business for themselves have no training in being in business.

Sure, you may have marketable skills, such as knowing how to make a product but unless you have some kind of business training it is highly unlikely you will succeed. You may even have remarkable skills but they might not be around how to turn a profit.

Some 50% of businesses fail and lose their investment in the first few years. If you do manage to keep your business going, it may not be performing to the level that allows you to build the company or build your wealth.

Recently I was asked to invest in a business that has failed twice. The owner of the business made exactly the same mistakes during the second failure as they did the first time they lost their business. During the running of their second business it was pointed out to them they needed to make fundamental changes to their business model. They ignored that advice and the business got into trouble again. They were offered an opportunity to get some help and they turned that down.

After five years, around 80% of new business go bust and the owners lose a large part of their investment.

You would think that during those five years the business owner would have taken opportunities to train in better business skills but they generally do not.

I became aware of man who has committed himself to a very large project. He has some experience in the industry but this kind of project is way out of his experience. The financial commitment he signed up for already is very large and he did that without even securing any investors. His plans for the business are vague and not profit-focused. It is clear to any experienced business person to see he has put himself at risk of bankruptcy before the business has even opened.

Remember only one in thousands of businesses makes it big. The rest are just people working for themselves but really it’s just a job by any other name.

You probably work much harder than you ever did and wonder if it the business can make it through the month, pay the wages and make it to the next month.

If this is the case, you are making basic fundamental business mistakes.

The problem is that if you are not trained around being in business you probably don’t know what those mistakes are; so you make them over and over again and wonder why your business is not fulfilling your dreams.

If you do know what those mistakes are, you may not know how to fix them. You may take years learning the experience of how to fix those mistakes. In the meantime you have lost profit opportunities.

You may allow your ego to get the better of you and be too proud to get help and admit you made those mistakes, and this of all mistakes, is the most deadly to any business.

You may be thinking of beginning or have just begun a business and you just do not see the point of spending money on being trained as a business person by people who actually have great experience in making money. You think reading a few books will give you what you need. Another fatal mistake.

Being in business and making the business profitable takes a large myriad of knowledge and skills. Without those you will make really fundamental and even fatal mistakes and often repeat those mistakes. So if you are going into business or in business you need to take the step to up your business training today to make your business successful.

Are you willing to learn how to become a better business person?

If so, I invite you to join me at my next introductory event, live in Sydney, on Wednesday 25 May, 6pm to 8.30pm:

I’m guessing a great deal. In fact, all of us say that to ourselves many times in our lives.

Dissatisfaction is what drives change.

If all we ever did was live the life we have been living, it would be very boring and even painful after a while.

Maybe you have got some really nasty stuff happening in your life that you would like fixed and changed? We’ve all been there in some shape or form.

Perhaps you are just bored with your status quo? The first dish of chocolate ice cream may taste fabulous but the tenth dish in a row makes you sick.

The problem for most people is that they have been programmed to believe life has limitations beyond which they may not pass.

As much as you may read, get educated or seek adventure, for most people, it is not until they are old that they realise this was just another illusion they’ve bought into.

So, if you are not happy with your life, ask yourself these questions:

What are you going to do about it?

Are you just a complainer and not truly prepared to take responsibility for the direction of your life?

Are you a pretender who is enthusiastic in the moment but later would rather watch the TV or go on holidays than change what needs changing?

Are you prepared to commit 100% to change?

Will you follow-up with what needs to be done to change your life or just make excuses?

Yes, these are tough and direct questions and you need to dig deep and answer them honestly.

If you don’t answer these questions in a way that sets you up for certain success, you are setting yourself up for certain failure.

The reality is that most people in our society would rather suffer their problems than change their lives. They will constantly complain about their lot, put on a brave face or not want to disturb that status quo because they would rather suffer what they do know than initiate a new, unknown reality.

So when you ask the question, “How can I change my life?”: Are you really prepared for the answer?

That answer begins with doing the work to change your mindset, expand your knowledge and skill base and, most of all, be prepared to step outside your comfort zone.

Scary eh?

Absolutely…because if you are not prepared to step and sometimes leap into the unknown, nothing will change at all.

All change begins in your mind.

What you know and who you were yesterday is not enough to take you to a new place and life experience.